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October 11, 2006

Gawker.com has instituted a timely and invaluable web service, the Douche-Bag Hall of Fame. And the founding douche bags are really doozies. First there’s Lucy Gao, whose unbelievably pompous and self-regarding invitation to her 21st birthday party at London’s Ritz Hotel allocates to her guests, as to ticket-holders to a blockbuster Impressionist show, specific 15-minute arrival slots; instructs them exactly what words to say to hotel staff when arriving (“you reply ‘I am here for Lucy’s Birthday Party at the Rivoli Bar.’ You will be escorted to the lounge area next to the Rivoli bar, where you will hopefully see a gorgeous group of ladies”); lists in detail appropriate and inappropriate items of dress (concluding the “Ladies” list with the general injunction: “no . . . bad tastes [sic]”); helpfully suggests that since “photos will be taken between 10pm to 10:30pm, and these will be distributed once processed, therefore you may want to be well-groomed!”; and announces that for those unable to understand even such particularized directions “my PA Ms Gill will kindly deal with your queries between 8:30pm to 10pm.”

But for general douche-baggery above and beyond the call of duty — abutting, to be honest, the limits of human conception — no one matches ‘06 Yale grad Aleksey Vayner (né Garber), whose spectacular career of gorgeously soaring and indomitable mendacity, examined with admirable thoroughness at Ivygate, includes claims that his allegedly close friendship with the Dalai Lama stems from years of studying Buddhism directly under him, that he has coached Harrison Ford and Sarah Michelle Geller in tennis, he is the CEO of a successful venture capital firm, wrote a pathbreaking feminist account of the Holocaust, is an experienced professional model, has a veritable agglomeration of black belts in various martial arts (fighting respectably against, e.g., Jean-Claude Van Damme), has studied Asian healing techniques from the world’s greatest masters, founded a philanthropic organization to help needy children, and for a time before matriculating at Yale, while auditing a year at Columbia University med school, was covertly employed simultaneously by the Russian Mafia and the CIA. And killed 24 men in caves under the mountains of Tibet. Don’t believe me? You could, as Casey Stengel would say, look it up. And when you do, definitely take the time to watch the entire bio-pic/motivational infomercial, tellingly entitled “Impossible is Nothing,” Aleksey submitted to investment banks along with his résumé. And read the article about Aleksey (headline: CRAAAAZY PRE-FROSH LIES, IS JUST WEIRD) published in the May 2002 Yale University Rumpus — on the basis of one student’s experience of him during a pre-frosh campus visit. And here’s the résumé. With an article attached to it that Aleksey completely plagiarized. And why did he change his name from Garber? I mean, the fact that he’s vainer than anyone in history should be self-evident.